DAVID JEREMIAH PRAISES MOTHER TERESA’S WORK (Friday Church News Notes, November 2, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The October 20-21, 2007, edition of “Turning Point with David Jeremiah” featured the work of the late Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta. There was not a hint of warning that this organization preaches a false gospel. The report even concluded with the following quote from Pope John Paul II: “Keep Jesus Christ in your hearts, and you will recognize His face in every human being.” The spiritual blindness of popular evangelicalism is evident in its praise of a woman who trusted in Mary and worshiped a piece of bread as Jesus Christ. She has been praised by Bill Hybels, Pat Robertson, John Wimber, World magazine, Christianity Today, Chuck Colson, James Dobson, D. James Kennedy, Billy Graham, World Vision, and many others. Mother Teresa helped needy people in a material sense, but she did not preach the gospel to them that they might be saved, because she did not know the gospel. In fact, she was a universalist. When Mother Teresa died, her longtime friend and biographer Naveen Chawla said that he once asked her bluntly, “Do you convert?” She replied, “Of course I convert. I convert you to be a better Hindu or a better Muslim or a better Protestant. Once you’ve found God, it’s up to you to decide how to worship him” (“Mother Teresa Touched other Faiths,” Associated Press, Sept. 7, 1997). [For more on this see http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/motherteresa.html and http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/mother-teresa-false-hope.html ]

CHRISTIANITY TODAY CALLS AUTHOR OF “AQUARIAN GOSPEL” AN EVANGELICAL (Friday Church News Notes, November 2, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The Christianity Today movie review of “The Aquarian Gospel,” Oct. 1, 2007, stated: “Drew Heriot, director of the self-help documentary The Secret, has been tapped to direct The Aquarian Gospel, a movie that follows the life of Christ through his ‘missing years’--including ages 13 through 30. ... Meanwhile, Jesus: The Lost Years, a documentary based on the Paul Perry book Jesus in Egypt, comes to DVD on November 13. Variety reports that the script for the former film is based on a pair of books: The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ, by evangelical writer Levi Dowling, and The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ, by Russian anthropologist Nicholas Notovich.” Dowling (1844-1911) was a very strange “evangelical”! He worshipped a false christ and wrote books under demonic dictation. He allegedly wrote The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ by tapping into the Akashic Records, a supposed field of knowledge surrounding the earth. The book claims that the child Jesus journeyed to India, Tibet, and Egypt to gain wisdom from religious masters and by means of education and meditation achieved the “Christ consciousness.” The book denies that Jesus is the virgin-born eternal Son of God, that He died and shed His blood on the cross to atone for man’s sins, and that He rose again the third day and ascended up to Heaven to sit on the right hand of God. While I was hitchhiking from California to Florida in late 1972 I came across the Aquarian Gospel and was influenced by it to join the Self-Realization Fellowship Society. I thank God that He had mercy upon me and opened my blinded eyes some months later and showed me the true Christ and the true Gospel of salvation.

CHRISTIAN COUPLE FORCED OUT OF FOSTER CARE FOR REFUSING TO PROMOTE HOMOSEXUALITY (Friday Church News Notes, November 2, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from the Daily Mail of London, England, Oct. 24, 2007: “They are devoted foster parents with an unblemished record of caring for almost 30 vulnerable children. But Vincent and Pauline Matherick will this week have their latest foster son taken away because they have refused to sign new sexual equality regulations. ... To do so, they claim, would force them to promote homosexuality and go against their Christian faith. The 11-year-old boy, who has been in their care for two years, will be placed in a council hostel this week and the Mathericks will no longer be given children to look after. The devastated couple, who have three grown up children of their own, became foster parents in 2001 and have since cared for 28 children at their home in Chard, Somerset. Earlier this year, Somerset County Council’s social services department asked them to sign a contract to implement Labour’s new Sexual Orientation Regulations, part of the Equality Act 2006, which make discrimination on the grounds of sexuality illegal. Officials told the couple that under the regulations they would be required to discuss same-sex relationships with children as young as 11 and tell them that gay partnerships were just as acceptable as heterosexual marriages. They could also be required to take teenagers to gay association meetings. ... Mr. Matherick, a 65-year-old retired travel agent and a primary school governor, said: ‘I simply could not agree to do it because it is against my central beliefs. We have never discriminated against anybody but I cannot preach the benefits of homosexuality when I believe it is against the word of God.’ ... Religious campaigners say the couple are the latest victims of an equality drive which puts gay rights above religious beliefs.” 

BEWARE OF ABWE (Friday Church News Notes, November 2, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Recently an evangelist wrote to ask me about the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (ABWE). Following is the reply that I sent: ABWE has been ecumenical for decades. Viggo Olson, their famous missionary doctor to Bangladesh, described in his book Daktar about how they worked with left-leaning New Evangelical groups such as Wheaton College beginning many decades ago. Lynn Silvernale, another ABWE missionary to Bangladesh, worked with the radically liberal-ecumenical United Bible Societies in producing a dynamic equivalency version of the Bengali Bible. (See http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/unholyhands1.htm) In 1983 ABWE published a report on Silvernale’s work entitled By the Word. Silvernale was in charge of the project beginning in 1966, so you can see how far back this compromise goes. She followed dynamic equivalency guru Eugene Nida who denies the infallible inspiration of Scripture and Christ’s substitutionary blood atonement. Note this very dangerous statement by Silvernale, “There is nothing special or ‘holy’ about the language of the Bible. Greek and Hebrew are subject to the same limitations as all natural languages.” To say that there is nothing special or holy about the language of the Bible is to deny both the sovereignty of God and the divine inspiration of Scripture. The Greek and Hebrew languages themselves are subject to limitations in everyday life as used by fallible men, but not as they are used in Scripture under divine inspiration! (For more on this see http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/dynamic1.htm.) Dr. Ralph Colas and Dr. Ernest Pickering both resigned from the board of ABWE in the late 1980s because of its compromise. Veteran Australian missionary David Bennett resigned in 1993 because of “its drift” and subsequently wrote “Should Separated Fundamentalists Support ABWE.” It is available from Bible for Today, 856-854-4452. The report “Little Known Facts about ABWE” is also available from Bible for Today. Michael McCubbins, former ABWE missionary, documented the mission board’s compromise in his 1996 book “Sedition in Missions.” According to the fall 2006 Message, published by ABWE, the home church of one of the newly appointed ABWE missionaries is the rock & roll loving, seeker-sensitive Northridge Church of Plymouth, Michigan. According to the Australian Baptist Newsletter for September 2004, an ABWE missionary in Brazil won a Purpose Driven Church international award in 2004 and flew to Saddleback Church in southern California for the presentation.

CLOTHING IS A LANGUAGE (Friday Church News Notes, November 2, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - It is important to understand that clothing is a language. It is a “social message,” a fashion “statement.” The knowledge of this is the engine that drives the fashion industry, and the child of God needs to understand it as well. I need to ask myself what message is my clothing broadcasting? Wikipedia defines fashion as “a prevailing mode of expression.” It acknowledges that “every article of clothing carries a cultural and social meaning” and observes that “humans must know the code in order to recognize the message transmitted.” The upscale unisex Pusch brand was developed by two brothers who realized as teenagers that “music had its own subculture, complete with a lifestyle and a style of dress” (“Groovin’ to the Right Tune: A Lifestyle Brand of Clothes Inspired by Calgary’s Music Scene Rocks the Competition,” Alberta Venture, October 2007, p. 12). The Pusch brand is a reflection of the rock & roll dance scene. An article in Business Week observed that Abercrombie & Fitch is “best known for its REBELLIOUS ATTITUDE” (“Flip-Flops, Torn Jeans, and Control,” Business Week, May 30, 2005). They don’t merely sell clothing; they sell an attitude via a certain style of clothing. In “The World according to Abercrombie and Fitch,” David Seel observed: “SUCCESSFUL BRANDS IN AMERICA DON’T SELL PRODUCTS. THEY SELL LIFESTYLES” (Critique, 2000). Therefore, clothing styles are not innocent. Each style preaches a message, and God’s people must be careful about what message they are preaching. The right message to preach by our clothing is the message of holiness and godly separation, the message that we are strangers and pilgrims in this wicked world.

QUICK PRAYERISM VS. BIBLE EVANGELISM (Friday Church News Notes, November 2, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - “Quick Prayerism” is a method of soul winning that has spread widely since the 1970s. “Quick Prayerism” evangelism is quick to do two things. First, it is quick to get people to pray a “sinner’s prayer” regardless of whether or not there is any evidence that the individual is even slightly interested in Christ, let alone that he is calling upon Christ from a heart of true repentance and genuine saving faith. Second, it is quick to give assurance to those who have prayed such a prayer and to include them in salvation statistics when there is no evidence that they have been born again and, in fact, when their lives witness against their profession. “They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate” (Titus 1:16). See also Matthew 7:21-23; John 10:27; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11; 2 Timothy 2:19; 1 John 2:3-4. A church in Maine had a soul winning campaign a few years ago and the people were instructed to go house to house and ask the following question: “If I could tell you that you can go to heaven when you die and you won’t have to change anything, would you be interested?” I believe that type of methodology is heresy and deception. We must tell people the same thing that the apostle Paul told them, that “they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance” (Acts 26:20). To tell sinners that God demands that they repent will cut down on the “decision” statistics, but it is the only honest and scriptural path. God has commanded that they repent (Acts 17:30) and Jesus said they can’t be saved without it (Luke 13:1-5), so how can we fail to tell them this? What good are empty professions and bogus salvation statistics?

ROCK MUSIC’S POLLUTION OF SOCIETY (Friday Church News Notes, November 2, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Rock music has coarsened, cheapened, and corrupted the morals of society ever since its inception. When Elvis Presley blasted on the scene in the 1950s his lewd antics were infamous and shocking at first but quickly became old hat, and rockers have continued to push the moral boundaries with each passing decade. Even the secular world admits this. A newspaper article about a Kid Rock concert in St. Paul, Minnesota, observed: ‘When John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s album ‘Unfinished Music, Vol. 1: Two Virgins’ hit stores in 1968, it shipped up a furor--not for the musical content but for its cover, a stark portrait of the pair standing naked as the day they were born. In the years since, nudity in the music world has become so common it’s nearly mundane” (“Whether They’re Bare, or Barely There,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, April 13, 2006, p. 5G). Do I hear someone protest that it is not the music that is to blame but the musicians? In fact, it is both. Every type of music speaks a message, and rock speaks sensuality, rebellion, and moral license. Its chief message is “I will live as I please.” Bible-believing churches once lifted a voice against rock & roll but most have been silenced by the onslaught of CCM. How can we preach against it when we are addicted to it?